There are various types of imaging devices, for instance, printers, copiers, scanners, and so on. The imaging device generally comprises an imaging body and imaging cartridges, wherein currently, all the imaging cartridges are detachably mounted on the imaging device; the imaging cartridges such as ink cartridges and toner cartridges are filled with recording materials for imaging; the imaging body adopts the imaging cartridges to form images on medium materials such as paper; chips are usually fixed on the imaging cartridges and referred to as imaging cartridge chips or ink cartridge chips; the ink cartridge chip is usually mounted on the imaging cartridge, or a circuit board of the imaging cartridge; and the circuit board mainly comprises the chip and peripheral circuits thereof. The chip generally includes a storage unit and a communication interface unit, wherein the storage unit is configured to store information such as the variety of ink, the data about the manufacturing date of the ink cartridge, the number of print pages, the serial number of the ink cartridge and the remaining ink amount. In addition, the imaging body reads and writes the storage unit through the communication interface unit. Currently, the read-write operation of the imaging body on the storage unit of the imaging cartridge chip adopts the following two modes:
1. asynchronous communication mode: a physical interface of the communication mode includes the following signal lines: a power supply terminal VCC connected with a voltage source signal line, a clock terminal CLK connected with a clock signal line for providing synchronous clock, a reset terminal RST connected with a reset signal line for providing a reset signal, a data terminal I/O connected with a data line for achieving the information interaction between the chip and the imaging device, and a ground terminal GND, 5 signal lines in total.
2. IIC bus, also known as I2C bus, being a multi-directional control bus: a physical interface of the IIC bus is also provided with four signal lines: a power supply terminal VCC, a clock signal terminal SCL, a data terminal SDA and a ground terminal GND.
The imaging body adopts the above two communication protocols to read and write the ink cartridge chip. The main physical connection is electrical contact portions, i.e. oft-stated contacts, disposed on the chip. Side terminals of the imaging device body corresponding to the contacts are respectively disposed on the imaging body. When the ink cartridge is mounted on the imaging device body, the side terminals of the imaging device body make electrical contact with the contacts on the ink cartridge chip, so that the data transmission between the ink cartridge chip and the imaging device can be achieved.
The contacts on the imaging cartridge chips with the terminals on the current market are all contacts with fixed functions such as power supply, clock, reset line, ground line and data, namely the contacts have specific functions and cannot be changed again in the design, processing, use and other links of the chip.
The fixed contact design has low cost; the contact distribution of the chips corresponds to the contact distribution of corresponding devices one by one, which is intuitive; and the functional needs of the ink cartridge chip can be satisfied. However, as the contact functions of the ink cartridge chip are locked and the contacts are fixed, the layout flexibility of a circuit board can be reduced in the use of the chip. In particular, when one chip is required to correspond to devices with different contact distribution modes, circuit boards with various kinds of contact distribution modes corresponding to the devices with different contact distribution modes must be designed at this point. One chip is required to be produced originally, but various different chip products are extended due to different contact distribution modes of different devices. Therefore, a plurality of problems can be brought to the production and processing, the production management and the product inventory, and the use convenience of the chips corresponding to various contact distribution modes can be limited.
For example, as for ink cartridge or toner cartridge chips used on printer consumables, all the printers produced by printer manufacturers in a very long period correspond to the same consumable chip. But along with the continuous production of new models of printers by the printer manufacturers, the update of the ink cartridge chips corresponding to the printers tend to lag behind, and hence the phenomenon that the chip is not changed but the contact distribution of the chip is constantly changed along with the change of side terminals of printer devices may occur. As the contacts of the previous chips have fixed functions, if the functions of the side terminals of the printer devices are changed, even if new data are written into the previous chips, the chips cannot be used again due to the limitation of the contact functions. Therefore, when old models of chips are used, the contact positions are changed by the re-design of circuit boards so as to be adaptive to new models of printers, which result in a large number of different contact chip inventories and corresponding problems in the aspect of management and cost.